


tactical visor activated

by x (ordinary)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Choking, Fights, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 04:12:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7085134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ordinary/pseuds/x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack's been digging around in Overwatch's old stomping grounds, and someone's finally caught up to him. Unfortunately.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tactical visor activated

Shrapnel whizzed by Jack's ear as he slammed a new cartridge into his rifle, limping to a corner to duck and heal out of sight. Came from the ledge on the left, but their footsteps tapered off into nothing. The place was labyrinthine enough that they'd be able to flank him shortly.

"C'mon, c'mon," he muttered, tapping his visor in irritation. Seventy six percent charged, and it wasn't going nearly fast enough. Grunting in displease, Jack leaned his gun against the wall to pry apart the two pieces of a pneumatic door long without power, slipping into the room to buy himself a little more time. It was an old canteen, dark as a remote night sky.  He enabled his visor's night vision and made his way past the cafeteria style tables and into the kitchen, clutching his side. Pain thrummed heavy along his liver and cracked ribs; biotic field just hadn't healed through the fire.

Made sense, though. Gabriel always had been his equal, and direct fire from was hard for _anyone_ to endure. Jack had known it was him from the first step. Twenty years together was a long time, and he remembered the sounds of everyone on the battlefield. Their gait. Their cries of pain. Their _weapons_. 

(Eighty two percent charged.) 

He'd know the sound of Gabriel's custom shotguns anywhere in the world, even in the frigid backwaters of northern Manitoba in an old Overwatch outpost. Far as Jack knew, not a soul had been here since they'd left it those years back. There were a bunch of these places, littered around the globe. Compact bases just big enough for a bit of a pit-stop, or holing up for a few days of rest, out of sight. This was the latter.

No one should have been there at all, but now it was the two of them all over again. No way to get backup, this far out, but it wasn't like he had any to call on, anyway. 

His name was Reaper, now. His new identity, reborn into something greater than death itself. The harbinger himself, wearing the name and the visage alike. Gabriel Reyes died in the cataclysm, the remnants of who he was once shed like a snakeskin. Only darkness remained, or so he'd like the world to think.

(Eighty seven percent charged.)

Jack knew better, and pitied him.

Another biotic field down, its pleasant glow silently knitting Jack back together, making him whole again. The Reaper would be coming, soon, and Jack needed to be together for it. When Overwatch fell amidst its wreckage, it had just been Jack versus Gabriel. Old soldiers turned friends turned rivals turned enemies. And now he was just a tired old man, dead set on doing good from the shadows. Someone had to, to quietly undo the damage the Reaper left behind in his wake.

He counted himself those damaged. Tensions had been high, between them, but he'd never thought--

Never thought it'd be like that.

(Ninety four percent charged.)

In the end, Jack left his corpse in those ruins, too. Stripped of his identity, the last twenty years stricken form the record, he was just a soldier. No face, no affiliation. No name, besides the one they gave him after watching the security footage. 

Metal scratched against metal as claws pried apart the same door, natural light filtering into the darkened room. It slammed shut behind the intruder, and the Soldier listened to the rustling of a long coat, nearly long enough to drag against the ground. He listened to the clink of his boots, heavy and sure. 

(Ninety eight percent charged.)

He listened to the reloads.

(Ninety nine percent charged.)

"It's been a long time," the Soldier said, quiet and tired, leaning against an old cabinet, gun resting. "But I suppose we've never met like this, have we?"

(One hundred percent charged.)  


The Reaper cocked his head, and it was the last thing the Soldier saw before removing his visor, setting it down on the ground. "Take off that mask of yours, won't you?" He turned blind eyes up to the darkness, trusting in what-once-was. Trusting in a past erased by everyone, including them. Trusting in a partnership that had long since gone nuclear. Trusting in exhaustion, because if the Soldier was tired, then the Reaper was too. It was not the Soldier's cells, stuck between construction and destruction. It was not the Soldier stuck between life and death. 

It paid off, if only slightly. The Reaper did not cooperate, but he lowered his guns. "Didn't take you for a coward," he said, low and cold. Irritated. "Get up."  


The Soldier shook his head. "I know it ends here. I'm old, not a fool." He unfurled gloved fingers from his pulse rifle, letting it sit on the ground, dormant. "I stand and fight, I die. Simple enough. Before then, though. Give me some closure."

Snarling, the Reaper stepped forward, furious beneath his mask. The Soldier still remembered the look; the curl of his lip on the right, a bared canine. Sometimes, his eye would twitch. Once upon a time, he had a shitty poker-face.  "You can't stall death," he said, and it was true. There was no way to outmaneuver a man made to flank. No way to heal through his fire without medpacks nearby. No way to win, immediate or drawing it out.

So the Soldier was going to go against his programming. 

He wasn't going to fight at all.

"I'm not going to make some big speech, if that's what you're worried about." The Soldier smiled, thin, gesturing to the space in front of him. Take a seat. Make yourself comfortable. Commiserate, before the murder. Anyone else would have been dead, before now, and he was going to end up dead anyway. What did it matter?

The Reaper grunted, standing opposite of the Soldier, laying his guns on the counter, easily within reach. "Nothing to give closure over. I died, you died. Here we are, anyway. You easier than me."

"So I hear," the Soldier replied, scratching at his week old scruff. Been on the run a while. Hadn't had much time to stop for the glamorous stuff. "Hear all sorts of things, doing odd jobs. About botched medical experiments. About someone who's hellbent on taking out every bit of evidence that there once was a force that did any good in this world."

Metal slammed against metal as the Reaper brought his fist down, growling sharp. Words didn't come easy to him, never had. Actions spoke louder; evidence of emotions written in simpler things. Deconstructed into waiting up for a whiskey at two am after a day of hard disagreements. Into shared cigarettes, rarely stolen when the goody-two shoes needed a break from it.

Into a ceasefire, temporary and fleeting.

Grunting, the Soldier stood, leaving his rifle behind. "Punch me," he said, plain. "Leave the guns, for now."

The Reaper did not move, peering through the mask, unreadable behind it. The Soldier pulled off his gloves, leaving his aged palms exposed, spread wide. His tactical visor laid on the ground, forgotten. It'd be nearly impossible to fight back, and they both knew it. It was an offering, sacrificial. One designed to goad the Reaper further; selfless Jack Morrison, ever the poster boy. Putting others first. Resolving conflicts. Shining with justice, blonde hair and white teeth, an all-American look to play into the idealized image of a hero.

He knew better, now. He'd been a tool, until they no longer needed him. Until the purpose he served was no longer good enough. And now he was so  _tired_.

"Come on, Gabriel."

A fist collided  _hard_ , metal knuckles crashing into his cheekbone with the force of a man incensed into irrationality, and it was enough to send him sprawling across the tile. Jack  _let_ it. Approaching like a stalking tiger, Gabriel removed his claws one glove at a time, yanking the mask off and casting it aside as well. Scarred just as much. "You don't get to call me that." Two big fists, curling into his collar, lifting him up, up, up, slamming Jack against a wall. "You were supposed to  _die_."

He wrapped bare hands around Gabriel's thick wrists, hissing his displease. His lungs struggled to find air, as it had been knocked clean out of him. Sagging against the door, Jack said: "So were  _you_."

" _I did_." 

In the brief lapse of silence, Jack jabbed a strong elbow to Gabriel's ribs, just hard enough to make him let go and step back.  _God._ The longer they circled like this, the younger Jack felt. How long had it been since those days? They had to still be sleeping in barracks, then. When these fights were about women, or duties, or orders. When they were play to win, not to maim. Not to kill. "So you  _heard_."

Ducking low, Jack charged at full speed, throwing them both across a cafeteria table till they hit the tile and skidded along it. Fingers wrapped just-so around Gabriel's neck, a smile curling the Soldier's lips.

"Would you again?" he asked, low, steadily applying pressure. Didn't actually have to grab that hard, to choke someone to death. Not if you knew where to apply pressure, and Jack did. "If I killed you here. Would you come back?"

Gabriel's body disappeared into the shadows, the mass of him dissipating beneath Jack. He reformed by the counter, bare hand gripping one of his shotguns, barrel pointed straight at Jack. "You couldn't. But even assuming that you could? No." 

Jack stood, gingerly pressing fingers into his cheekbone. It'd bruise awful. Hopefully they'd be able to conceal it at the funeral, if his body would be in good enough condition by the time they found him. He stepped towards his old ally, hands up. "Go on, then." Encroaching step by step, Gabriel stood still as Jack pressed the barrel to his chest. Laid it over his heart, gave him the easiest shot. 

"Pull the trigger."

Dark eyes shined in the dark, with fury and rage and everything but indecision. He knew what he had to do, and put it off.

In a swift motion, he dropped to the ground and swept up his visor with one hand and his rifle with the other. It activated, flooding Jack's sight with a red field, just one target painted on it. Without the mask, it was so much easier to land a headshot. One cartridge and he crumpled, mid shot. One cartridge, and that was the end, anticlimactic and painted red. Bits of brain matter spattered his coat and visor, evidence of his wrongdoing, his justice, his revenge. It all went hand in hand.

Gabriel's corpse did not disappear into shadow, and Jack laughed, hollow. Part of him wished it would. 

Instead, Jack knelt by it and kissed his bare forehead, fingers slipping into swiftly cooling ones. His own chest was blood-soaked; some of the fire had landed, piercing his coat. "Trusting me was always your biggest mistake, old friend. Never should have asked you to join me."

He was going to sit here, for a time. Just to rest. He was out of biotic fields, so he'd need to make it back to civilization to fully patch himself up beyond a rush job.

But the Soldier was tired. So he'd rest, for now.

Just for now.

* * *

 

__ His name was Reaper, now. His new identity, reborn into something greater than death itself. The harbinger himself, wearing the name and the visage alike. Gabriel Reyes died in the cataclysm, the remnants of who he was once shed like a snakeskin. Only darkness remained, or so he'd like the world to think.   
  
Jack knew better, and pitied him. 

**Author's Note:**

> sad old men


End file.
